Saturday, February 6, 2010

12. and bust again

Alix over at Casa Hice asked me this after one of my more recent posts on this thread and I’ve decided to answer it here: Do you love what you do? Or do the deadlines and demands stress you out?...I’d have to say that mostly I love what I do. Although there were several years in there (as described in this post and the previous installment) that I pretty much hated it. It was nothing BUT stress during those years. Now, though, now I do love it. I love to make things, to work with my hands, to have an idea and construct it. Mostly I am happy with the result, sometimes all I see are the flaws and sometimes I amaze even myself. But it’s not usually the end result that I work for. It’s the process. That said, it can get stressful when I have more work than I can do and make everybody happy about how long it takes them to get their job. It is also stressful when we don’t have enough work...will a job come in before our meager savings run out? When I was younger and we didn’t have any work, I would make cold calls to designers and architects to sell ourselves. I really hated that and eventually quit doing it. If things got desperate, then I’d just go out and get a job. Haven’t ever had to do that yet but there was a year or two when I actually applied for a job. Funny thing though, when you have been self employed doing something so specialized for as long as we have, you basically become unemployable unless, of course, you want to work at Walmart or a fast food joint.

My friend John Kurman’s recent post on Random Walks is sort of about this same thing...fun/not fun. While working this past week, spending the last four days laminating about 550 jewels (of which a little less than half had already had dicroic glass glued to it and ground smooth) to the window behind the altar of a chapel we had lots of visitors pop in when they would notice us working. At one point during the week, a lady came in and asked me if it was fun. Fun?! Lady, this is work, I'm up on a friggin' 12' ladder! But now that it's done? Yeah, it was fun. Well, maybe not fun exactly, as Reya said (see comments below) satisfying.

so, continuing (and as usual, if you are new here or haven’t yet read the whole story, click here and read from the bottom up)...

By 1992 (our kids were 15 and 13 by then), the bottom was falling out of our lives. Our first employee, the one who had taken over all the actual sandblasting, and Marc never did really get along and the tension between them became worse and worse over the years until he finally quit in the middle of a big job, 5 floors of an interior wall system that surrounded the central elevator shafts. And on top of that the stress was doing both of us in. One day I found myself yelling at one of the local designers who had come by to talk about a job we had done for her that had a small problem. Marc and I were constantly at each other’s throats, were on the verge (maybe even over the line a little bit) of the three ‘Ds’...drink, drugs and divorce. We were taking weekends away from each other (this is when I started the river guide gig). As soon as we finished that last big job with the help of a friendly competitor, we basically quit. We let our other two employees go and took a year off while we repaired our lives. That year turned into nearly two before we were finally able to go back to work in earnest. Every penny we had left from the big money days, we spent those two years and in the ensuing years while we started our business back up.

17 comments:

hey ellen, there were times working inside the art of our work that my dad, my brother and i would be close to something truly awful and there were some real body blows exchanged between my brother and i when stuff was out of control. i read your story and remember so many of those moments and those feelings. you had the wisdom to bail and take a year or more to sort life out into something that works better for you. man i wish i'd known myself better back then. steven

These are the reasons most people take any job that helps to feed and clothe them. We end up in deadly places with no creative juices and die from the inside out. I'm reading your story and I know what my daughter, who has chosen the road less travelled, must be going through.

Yes indeed. Everyone thinks I have to most funnest job ever. and I do. most of the time.Things are slower and money is tighter now, but I'm much happier than when we were super busy and I was losing my mind with the stress.

I'm like you, been self employed for so long that I'm qualified to man the drive-up window - maybe even the front counter on a busy night.

I've probably mentioned before that my cousin is a potter - so I have (from a bit of a distance) seen the stress & beauty of her job. She taught at the local community college to supplement her work - & HATED it. I think that she's able to just do the pottery now - but it's never an easy life.

I love life stories - the highs and the lows, the wounds and the repairs, the growth, the appreciation - guess that's why I listen to them for a living. Thanks for sharing these details about your life Ellen. You are one strong woman!

time away is always good. too much of anything is bad...well except regarding time off ; )

i think satisfaction in work is a must. it consumes entirely too much of our daily energies, time, and mind to have it be a burden.

on the other hand i also believe that there are times we may be forced into a job we abhor. i did this in college trying to earn a couple extra dollars while also managing my school work, sports, being a husband, and a father. i looked at this time of my life as a 'comma' not a 'period' meaning working till 3am to help pay for diapers was temporary.

my experience was in college but it can happen at anytime in a persons life. each personal experience is just that...personal.

Good for you, having the courage to quit and spend as much time as was needed to repair and rebuild. Few people would do that, which is why so many people are unhappy in their jobs. "I can't quit." "I'm stuck in this job." But sometimes you just have to stop and take a break and start over. Bravo to you.

Ellen, I am enjoying seeing life from your perspective. While I have regrets at times about not sticking with an earlier intention to make my way in life as a writer, I recognize my need for financial stability to raise my kids was a legitimate reasons (among others) for my choices. I appreciate and greatly respect your choices - and the jeweled windows are lovely.